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journalism

I’ve been seeing some interesting stuff about fake news. It’s not surprising to me that there’s an increase in fake news since the regular news seems to have some questionable assumptions & untrustworthy conclusions.
What we want is true news – stuff that’s objective & accountable. We want to listen / see news that has been researched & proven to be reliable. We want news that’s proven to be balanced & accurate over long amounts of time.
But let’s never forget or ignore that Good News is ground zero. And here’s the Good News:

Jesus loves you

Jesus doesn’t change

Jesus is sovereign

Regardless of the fake-ness or truth of the news that’s reported, the Good News is reliable, immutable & eternal!

Clearly, this year’s presidential race has generated heaps of attention, angst, journalism opportunities and raised eyebrows. The tumultuous run-offs between Ted Cruz versus Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders have encouraged me to pray more than I ever have for this year’s election.

Regardless of your political persuasions, let’s be sure that we keep our prayer level higher than our worry level. Let’s remember that God is in control more than any man or woman. Let’s be certain that we do three things that mark us as followers of Jesus, based on John 13:35:

love God

love people

love ourselves

Loving well is letting the Holy Spirit pour God’s love into our hearts, moment by moment & day by day 🙂

Yesterday, 12 journalists at the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris were killed by radical Muslims. The news is full of details about this massacre, the motives for the slaughter & the subsequent manhunt to find the guilty individuals. There’s a large outcry against this atrocity, particularly from Western nations to say nothing of the journalism community who herald the cause of freedom of speech.
Here’s what gets me: the rationale for this massacre is based on the premise that this magazine said offensive things related to Islam so several Muslim men believed they were justified to reply to such insults with large scale murder. In essence, if you say something offensive enough to me, my extreme behavior is a justified response to your insults.
This kind of thinking doesn’t square with Jesus’ teachings about being insulted & turning the other cheek. While we are horrified with what happened yesterday, let’s be careful that we don’t pay back insults for insults 🙂